The picture of Edward Snowden, bottom, a former CIA employee who leaked top-secret documents about sweeping US surveillance programs, is displayed on the front page of South China Morning Post at a news stand in Hong Kong Thursday, June 13, 2013. Snowden dropped out of sight after checking out of a Hong Kong hotel on Monday. The South China Morning Post newspaper said it was able to locate and interview him on Wednesday.

The Chinese media have been particularly interesting to watch, given Snowden’s decision to seek refuge in Hong Kong. Snowden told The Guardian he chose to flee to Hong Kong because “they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent” – and China’s own history of state surveillance.

"For months, Washington has been accusing China of cyberespionage, but it turns out that the biggest threat to the pursuit of individual freedom and privacy in the US is the unbridled power of the government," The China Daily quoted Li Haidong from China Foreign Affairs University.

China’s state media today implied the scandal could hurt US-Chinese relations, a comment that comes just days after President Obama met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in California. In the leadup to Mr. Xi’s visit last week, The Christian Science Monitor wrote that “Strategic trust between the world’s top two economies is at a dangerously low level, worn away recently in a number of ways.” Top on that list? Accusations from Washington that Beijing used “massive commercial espionage.”

In our experience in China, basically there is no privacy at all – that is why China is far behind the world in important respects: even though it has become so rich, it trails behind in terms of passion, imagination and creativity….

[Prism] puts individuals in a very vulnerable position. Privacy is a basic human right, one of the very core values. There is no guarantee that China, the US or any other government will not use the information falsely or wrongly. I think especially that a nation like the US, which is technically advanced, should not take advantage of its power. It encourages other nations….

When human beings are scared and feel everything is exposed to the government, we will censor ourselves from free thinking. That's dangerous for human development…. We must not hand over our rights to other people. No state power should be given that kind of trust. Not China. Not the US.